I haven't brewed it myself yet, but Old Peculier is one of my all-time favorite beers and I plan on trying to clone it myself in the future. I ran across an blog where he used the Chimay yeast and swears it's dead-on. Here's his tasting notes from his brew and a link to the recipe on hopville (It's an extract recipe, so YMMV). If you give it a go, please post your results because I absolutely love this beer.

Its been a long time since I've had it too. The second batch I brewed was a clone of it. I dont remember how close it was to the original but I do remember it came out great. I will look for the recipe when I get home and post it if I can find it. I know I used molasses and the yeast was maybe WLP013 London Ale Yeast. I've been meaning to rebrew it or brew another version for years now. If you do brew it, please update this post.

Here is the recipe that I found. It was an extract kit that is supposed to be an Old Peculier Clone(I dont remember where I got it from). The measurements of the specialty grains were given in cups not by weight.

I used 4oz of light molasses. If I brewed this again, I would use treacle. It is easy to have molasses overpower the beer. Like I said, I dont remember how close it was to Old Peculier, and I dont know enough to tell if its going to be close by looking at the recipe but I'm sure others can. I hope this helps. If you do find a recipe that works please post it. I would like to brew an old peculier clone but I unfortunately dont have the time for the beers i already have lined up in my mind to brew. Summer may be over before I get to brew my summer ale.

This is what I tried last December, and last month I did a side-by-side tasting with the real McCoy (bottle, US) which I and an English friend who grew up on the stuff found to be pretty darn close or at the very least within the same ballpark, tastebuds being different as they are

This was the first time I used Optic and I loved it. Fat and juicy malt. But any british pale will do. Torrified wheat can be omitted as I don't believe the real recipe uses it. I thought it may have added a nice creaminess but at this level it might just be suggestive.

I couldn't definitively pick out the dark fruit flavors of this sugar in the beer and my bottles of OP didn't have that "treacly" character I remember from bottles I had more than several years ago. I'm sure one could substitute black treacle here but I have no experience with that. From the link posted, I actually used the dilution method with blackstrap molasses, Brer Rabbit brand.

The Black Patent probably could be swapped with roasted barley, chocolate, etc. I tend to like black patent and don't find it acrid. Any of that black character did mellow out to where my brew and OP were pretty dang close in character. If you're afraid to use it in the mash, feel free to throw it in during the sparge to reduce its flavor. The real recipe probably uses a jet black brewers caramel instead.

I used Willamette instead of Fuggles and didn't suffer from the substitution. OP in the bottle doesn't have much hop character in it except to balance the sweetness. Feel free to dryhop with Fuggles if you'd like.

I went with the Yorkshire strain and felt it was superb in this capacity. I've had mixed success bottle-conditioning with this and other similar English yeasts. Definitely carb on the low end- though I found the OP a bit spritzy in the bottle. If I were to bottle again with this strain, I may consider not priming at all as I suspect it reawakens in the bottle.

My side-by-side comparison was done at 5 months, only because that's when I first found Theakson's was available in my area. I felt the beer was pretty tasty a month after brewday, which may be too young for some brewers in general. The beer lost some of its creamier mouthfeel and became drier as it aged, probably in part because of the increased carbonation and the bottle conditioning, which I think detracted from the beer somewhat. I kept the beer at cellar temps 50-60F. I'd say the black patent character dropped out the quickest but I also tend to think that later it adds a different dimension to the beer (dryness, can accentuate the dark fruits, tart/port, etc). The recipe does not have a lot of black malt in it and it is essentially there for color, I believe. YMMV. I only made enough for 10 bottles and I wasn't able to age it for longer than 5 months. I'm finding that difficult to do with some of the English strains.

Im somewhat confused by Old Peculier and the old style ale. In most places I have read Old ALes are ales that are brewed and aged but in some places I've read said they are brewed in an "old style" (like an Alt). And is Old Peculier an old ale or an English Strong?